“Apple, Inc. Is About to Expand U.S. Manufacturing, but It’s Not What You Think” By Evan Niu, Fox Business Too bad we’re not talking about iPhone manufacturing. Expanding domestic manufacturing is the popular thing to do right about now, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in just 10 days. We’ve already seen a handful of domestic companies cave to the political pressure, altering investment plans to focus on U.S. facilities in some cases. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has also been dragged into the debateOpens a New Window., for better or for worse. Well, the Mac maker is now reportedly looking to expand its operations in Mesa, Arizona, and begin “high-tech manufacturing,” according to government documentsOpens a New Window. first noticed by Business InsiderOpens a New Window. yesterday. Apple is looking to assemble data center cabinets at the facility, and they would be destined for use in Apple’s other data center facilities around the world. The company currently assembles data center gear at each respective site, but this move would consolidate the assembling in Mesa. Finished equipment will be shipped to other Apple data centers within the U.S., according to the...

“Apple is reportedly trying to move iPhone manufacturing to the US” By James Bareham, The Verge Apple is reportedly asking its manufacturing partners to investigate moving iPhone production to the United States, according to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei. According to the report, sources claim that Apple has approached Foxconn and Pegatron, the two manufacturing companies that are largely responsible for assembling iPhones. Foxconn is apparently exploring the possibility, while Pegatron has elected to decline due to cost concerns. According to the Nikkei, Apple made the request to explore moving manufacturing to its partners in June, prior to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the recent election. But despite that, this report has to be considered in light of Trump’s comments regarding Apple earlier this year. Trump has repeatedly suggested that Apple move its manufacturing back to the US. His most recent comments were made in January at a talk at Liberty University where Trump said, “We’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.” Moving iPhone production overseas would likely be a pricey endeavor, with Nikkei sources claiming that it would increase production costs by nearly 50 percent, which makes sense given that the vast majority of Apple’s part suppliers are already located in Asia. Motorola also tried to move smartphone manufacturing to America, but the experiment ended in 2014 when Motorola closed the factory due to costs. Apple has made some efforts in bringing hardware production back to America in the past — most notably, the Mac Pro in 2013, when the company invested over $100 million dollars to jumpstart production — but relocating iPhone manufacturing to the United States would be a move of a vastly different...

“New App Turns Apple iOS Devices into Professional Vibration Measurement Tools” Featured in Design-2-Part Magazine FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich.—ACE Controls, a specialist in industrial damping technology, has introduced a new app that is said to turn iPhones and iPads into professional vibration and impact measuring devices, providing users with a high-performance, lightweight alternative to more costly systems. ACE’s VibroChecker PRO native iOS app is an upgraded version of its original VibroChecker app, which uses the acceleration sensors, gyroscopes, and microphones integrated in the iPhone and iPad to measure vibrations on machines and components within a frequency range of up to 50 Hz. Upgrading to the new ‘PRO’ version of the app increases the range up to 8,000Hz. The user simply has to connect an external USB sensor (available from a third party) to the iOS device via the lightning port and an adaptor. Measurement results can be saved or emailed directly to Ace Controls. The app is available for download here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vibrochecker-pro/id1076108553?mt=8&ign-...

By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Wall Street Journal Consumer-electronics maker accelerates efforts to build Apple-branded car Apple Inc. is accelerating efforts to build an electric car, designating it internally as a “committed project” and setting a target ship date for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter. The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan , have been given permission to triple the 600-person team, the people familiar with the matter said. Apple has hired experts in driverless cars, but the people familiar with Apple’s plans said the Cupertino, Calif., company doesn’t currently plan to make its first electric vehicle fully autonomous. That capability is part of the product’s long-term plans, the people familiar with the matter said. Apple’s commitment is a sign that the company sees an opportunity to become a player in the automotive industry by applying expertise that it has honed in developing iPhones—in areas such as batteries, sensors and hardware-software integration—to the next generation of cars. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. There are many unanswered questions about Apple’s automotive foray. It isn’t clear whether Apple has a manufacturing partner to become the car equivalent of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that builds most iPhones and is known by the trade name Foxconn. Most major auto makers build and run their own factories, but that hasn’t been Apple’s strategy with iPhones or iPads. Contract manufacturing in the auto industry usually is limited to a few niche models. The 2019 target is ambitious. Building a car is a complex endeavor, even more so for a company without any experience. Once Apple completes its designs and prototypes, a vehicle would still need to undergo a litany of tests before it could clear regulatory hurdles. In Apple’s parlance, a “ship date” doesn’t necessarily mean the date that customers receive a new product; it can also mean the date that engineers sign off on the product’s main features. It isn’t uncommon for a project of this size and complexity to miss ship-date deadlines. People familiar with the project said there is skepticism...

By John Biggs, TechCrunch Liquidmetal, as you’ll recall, is a bulk metallic glass – BMG – that can be cast into shapes and then hardens into a metal. It’s popular in watchmaking and was recently taken up by Apple in their iPhone manufacturing process. Today’s patent, however, addresses the process of casting multiple metals or BMGs, allowing manufacturers to surround alloys in other alloys. Patent No. 9,103,009 is a “method of using core shell pre-alloy structure to make alloys in a controlled manner.” This means you can cast objects consisting of multiple metallic layers including metal over BMG, BMG over metal, and an alloy of both. By cooling the material at proper rates you reduce the opportunity for crystals to form inside the metal, thereby ruining the object. Clearly this esoteric patent isn’t aimed at the average consumer – yet – but it could mean some interesting designs for phones and wearables down the road. The company holds the exclusive license to the technology and should be implementing it in more hardware in the...